Qatar Airways is attacking airline startup Riyadh Air in its newest ad campaign, essentially accusing the airline of being a copycat. This is sort of subtle, but also not at all. Apparently this is also the first of many ads on this topic.
Continue reading: Qatar Airways Takes (Not So Subtle) Dig At Riyadh Air In Shady New Ad
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This is... really not intelligent. Brands that are new to a space or trying to compete with the established big players will sometimes try marketing campaigns including their brand along with the big dogs so that the consumer will associate with newcomer with the top brands in the space. So congrats Qatar... you just gave free advertising to Riyadh? This just comes across as the CEO is petty and insecure. So weird and completely misguided. If you really have to throw a temper tantrum then do it in a private way.
While the intentions of today's post are pretty obvious, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that the other past was an attack on Riyadh. Airlines post this kind of stuff all the time. It was even posted before Riyadh's post!
It would take much more than just Twitter posts to create a serious and effective marketing campaign against Riyadh.
On a completely separate note, seeing Riyadh's British CEO denouncing something as "haram" makes Scott Kirby's sucking up to Trump look like nothing (even if he probably doesn't have much other choice!).
All this does is give Riyadh air more positive publicity.
What did you say? The world’s best airline felt the need to directly attack you even before you got a plane off the ground? Well that’s something alright!
The girls are fighting! Honestly, it doesn't make QR look good to attack another airline.
How insecure do you have to be to run an ad about an airline that hasn't even operated a single commercial flight yet?
You don't see the other top airlines in the world with a lot of similarly close competition attack each other like that. CI/EVA/JX, ANA/JAL, SQ/CX, etc.
QR should let its product stand on its own. Riyadh will probably not even be that good tbh.
I mean, who's gonna decide or not decide to fly Qatar or Riyadh because of this whole thing.
QR L but not even close to a big deal.
This is why I simply have a love hate relationship with Qatar Airways. I’ve taken Qatar in the past (2019/2020). I thought the hard product was okay, and the soft product to be adequate! Furthermore, Qatar delivers a good soft product with delicious food, proactive staff, and overall cleanliness consistently. The issue I have with Qatar is simply how shady the company can be. It’s clear that the only thing Qatar cares about is grabbing positive attention. They do that by parading their accolades and making people “fall in love” with the airline. They also want to sweep negativity under the rug (most evident in Josh Cahill’s “negative” video on Qatar’s decline). These shady practices are all done for attention and likely either for profit and/or to get people to actually visit the country. To me, I don’t like these shady practices, and again I still think Qatar is a decent airline, but they are simply not the world’s best, and let’s be real, the ad saying that “Qatar is the best for a reason” is all because they pay Skytrax a ton of money to get that award.
Agreed. I've never really felt that QR soft product was that good. In my experience, their FAs are always overwhelmed and seem way too busy due to their service flow.
Their hard product is great most of the time, but that's because it also needs to be, you're often flying 12+ hours to DOH and then connecting for another medium to longhaul segment.
Like yes, the nice plating and dinner candle have a soft product element, but beyond that, I've never found their FAs to be particularly above and beyond in the same way I find Taiwanese and Japanese carriers.
There's a clear cut below in terms of QR and the top tier service in the world.
Those are all Asian airlines. It is simply not in Japanese, Taiwanese or Singaporean culture to take subtle digs at a competitor, while it’s very much possible in the West or the Middle East. Heck, I’ll be absolutely shocked if EVA Air comes out with an ad campaign of any kind, let alone one mocking Starlux. I’ve never seen any ad from EVA.
hopefully this will push Qatar to improve its soft product. While I haven't had issues on the service end in the air, the wine and catering lately has much to be desired. They have gone the way of American Airlines, and iM hoping this will help reverse course. In addition, the ground experience, is at best chaotic,
Oddly Enough ive never had a good experience onboard premium cabins onboard JL and NL. But I also have a bit more melanin in my skin
Frankly, I don't care. Businesses advertise and businesses take shots at each other.
Having a slow day?
Haram? Does this guy even know what it means or just trying to sound the part in the middle east. Extremely disrespectful. Scammers like this come and treat middle Eastern Muslims like idiots. I hope RA see through this guys lies and appoint somebody else.
In economy, at least a few years ago, I found the soft product to be adequate, but not stellar and certainly not the “world’s best.” The food portions look smaller than other carriers (Emirates, ANA, JAL, Korean Air, and Asiana all have bigger portions, albeit that could be a cultural thing), but they’re usually tasty. Personally, Qatar offers a consistently adequate product in economy, but just not cutting edge. Sure the business class product might be absolutely incredible but that’s for a significant minority of all travelers. Most will be in economy and Qatar’s economy product is not nearly as good as other airlines like ANA. The crews I’ve heard have been overworked at Qatar, and I’ll be honest ANA’s crew is miles ahead of Qatar because the crews are just so happy and clearly love their jobs, which makes me so happy!
The issues I have with Qatar other than their shadiness comes down to two things:
1. Qatar’s Hard Product is inconsistent. One plane has a state of the art economy class cabin with large screens and whatnot, while another plane has an overly outdated product that doesn’t meet today’s standards. There are a lot of airlines that, while potentially inconsistent, have products where the “worst” product is better than Qatar’s “worst” product in economy (EVA Air, Singapore Airlines, even Delta on their long haul fleet), and many carriers now have mostly consistent products that are good enough (like Starlux, KLM, China Airlines, etc.). This is also most problematic for Business class, where you could be hit with a 2-2-2 configured business class when you were expecting QSuites! This is probably the biggest issue of the airline minus their shady practices.
2. Hamad Airport is simply overrated. Now I will say that Hamad airport was used as a layover for a flight to Singapore, but personally, Hamad airport is just not my favorite. The immigration was slow, one of the staff members was rude, and while I know there are other airports that have double security checks, I don’t like the double security check and I also didn’t like being contained in a cramped glass box. Compared to Changi, Hamad looks boring (minus the architecture).
Basically, my main point is that Qatar Airways is good but not incredible and probably not 5 stars (in economy at least).
I’m all for competition and think it’s good for the consumer but frankly Riyadh air isn’t offering me anything the ME4 don’t. Nothing about their product entices me to pick them over carriers I already fly and like, and I imagine most feel the same. I feel like their passengers will primarily be Saudi nationals, people flying specifically to Riyadh, and people burned by QR customer service. Not a recipe for a wildly successful airline tbh, I imagine the best they can aspire to is a more consistent Oman Air
I just Hope Saudis & UAE don't Ban the Qatari Flights to fly over their air space again.
I just can't see any self respecting westerner choosing RA over Qatar..... RA will NOT have alcohol on board for just thr same reason Tony says Saudis prefer QA and that's because alcohol is HARAM!! At the end of the day Qatar didn't move the needle on RA with any free publicity by attacking them.... It was just a little squirt of camel piss in their direction to say, "Nice Try Tony"!
I should add that the reason why QR is eating Saudi Arabia's lunch is that QR flies 5 widebodies daily between DOH and RUH/JED each. Meanwhile, SV flies a single narrowbody between the two airport pairs.
Doesn't take an airline CEO to figure out how and why QR is poaching all of the Saudi fliers
If I didn't know otherwise, you could've convinced me that His Excellency was still the boss of QR with content like this lol. Next he'll start rubbing salt into the wound of SV.
Yet you clicked, read, and posted: all being the opposite of "not caring."
Strange.
i actually think it's really funny that they're getting in a cat fight, they're so catty
It is funny you said "The girls are fighting!" since it is actually the boys who are fighting.
What do you know about the Saudi consumer market. You think local Saudi’s are going to take their business to Qatar. They would never, it’s a matter of pride.
Low income will always take the cheapest flight.
Only battle here is the “middle class - expats”, will they route through Qatar to go to London/Europe, probably not as much as you think. So chill out.